


Paint My Name

by FunkyinFishnet



Category: Professional Wrestling, World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: Gift Giving, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Spells & Enchantments, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 22:04:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14222742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunkyinFishnet/pseuds/FunkyinFishnet
Summary: Ember Moon grows herbs, makes gris-gris bags and notices things. Aleister Black doesn't appreciate her sense of humour. There are worse things.





	Paint My Name

 

 

 

There's a charm hanging from Velveteen's purple bandana, dangling tantilisingly over his right ear. Ember grins – she's close enough to see how well it's been handcrafted. Someone's worked their fingerprints into the metal and there's a snake winding subtly around a couple of flames. Well, well, well.

 

 

Velveteen catches her stare and smile and stares hautily back, looking as always like he's posing for unseen cameras. His grace is obvious even when he's still; his physical strength isn't. Ember can see why he distracts Aleister.

 

 

“Is there a reason why you're staring at me with such rudeness uncalled for?” Velveteen asks.

 

 

His fingernails have been painted to match his bandana. Ember's smile widens with knowingness and there's a corresponding crease of annoyance across Velveteen's glistening brow before it smooths out and he's camera-ready again.

 

 

He walks off when she stays silent, though he's wearing an expression in the opposite mirror that lets her know this won't be the last she hears of it. Oh, this could be fun.

 

 

*

 

It's definitely something when later that week, despite the pain burning in her arm, Ember is painting names in three languages across a stretch of paper and a voice materialises over her shoulder, out of shadows that flicker in every corner of the room.

 

 

“You're disturbing my sleep.”

 

 

The tone is measured. Ember smiles, knowingness licking at her expression again. She doesn't bother glancing over because darkness is already beginning to spread over the tabletop and her painting soon has to pause.

 

 

“Liar. That's not usually your card.”

 

 

Her tone matches her expression and Aleister's hands – bearing at least two designs Ember knows intimately from her own brushstrokes – walk across the paper, threatening to smudge her work. Her coal-red gaze narrows enough not to be playful anymore.

 

 

“Liar,” she repeats, a warning.

 

 

Aleister's fingers skirt the ink and come to rest just beside it all, his own warning. “My sleep is disturbed.”

 

 

That's not a lie. Ember's gaze relaxes enough to match his concession. “Not by me.”

 

 

Aleister holds her gaze and nods after a single moment, the ice cracking. He watches as she takes up her brush again with a pained grimace and paints out letters, each one forming names without the brush ever leaving the surface. Her lips move silently to seal each part. Aleister doesn't tell her stop or act like she's being foolish, even though he can see her pain. He watches and silently draws out his own words with fingertips. Only the suggestion of a healing spell.

 

 

There's always more to do before the pain matters. He knows that.

 

 

He stays, as he always does, until the candles are almost stubs. There'll be fresh ones outside her door by sundown tomorrow and three, maybe four, gris-gris bags taken from her kitchen cupboard. He can always make them up himself but Ember was taught to grow her own herbs; a distant relative tends them when she can't. She's one of many, they all supply what's needed. A family tree should nourish itself. Ember paints a lot of names each week.

 

 

She has more dried skins than Aleister is able to source. He likes the flannel she chooses too. He doesn't say but she knows.

 

 

It's when he turns towards the shadows again that Ember's playful knowingness returns.

 

 

“He looks good in your work.”

 

 

Aleister's footsteps don't pause at all. “He always looks good.”

 

 

*

 

 

There's a brooch set with a cat's eye shell that Ember wears pinned to the inside of her favourite jacket. It's set in gold and maybe it looks like it hasn't worked – her arm is injured, she's in a lot of pain. But that's not the kind of protection Ember's looking for. Aleister knows that. So she keeps wearing it. Her herbs are growing, she heard from her sisters and brothers only two days before, her eyes haven't changed color. She hasn't run out of ink.

 

 

Velveteen is sporting a new ring, its silver subtly matches the necklace draped around his neck that tinkles with every movement. Ember smiles silently as she rehabs close by and feels his annoyance prickling across her skin. Aleister is frowning at her from somewhere too.

 

 

She doesn't stop smiling though because she has bags to make up for Ruby and her squad and she can make sure they receive them before tomorrow night's show without the magic of UPS. Aleister will appear when she's working on more letters. He'll smell of _rookworst_ and crackle with unsteady sleep when the opposite should be true, if Velveteen's ambience is to be believed.

 

 

Ember will ask him if he's tried a white candle and lavendar oil and she knows she'll feel his dry humor because that's not his area at all and it'll only feed into why he claims he hasn't been sleeping. His problem is he hasn't been **resting**. But he knows that. It's why Ember smiles.

 

 

Ruby will ask about her smiles later and Ember will just steeple her fingers and Ruby will understand with a wicked laugh and eyebrow waggle that she won't explain to Sarah or Liv, woken up from their puppy pile by her volume. Ember will light and annoint candles for them and paint their names.

 

 

Ruby will say she's marking out spells for Ember and her arm. Someone's got to. Ruby gets it. Her tattoos are crawling over more of her skin now and she stands like she knows every part of them to be true. There's charms sewn into her jacket and her fists make shapes, when they're not warming coins between fingers and knuckles and sending them to Ember for all kinds of reasons, and people.

 

 

Ruby's always liked bat wings in her gris-gris bags.

 

 

Ember pinches a bronze coin between finger and thumb. She can feel Velveteen's eyes, their questions. Has Aleister explained anything? Or has he just given gifts that he knows Velveteen will accept unquestioningly – glittery and sparkle and Aleister's gaze heating every trickle of space in between. Ember leaves a coin in the lining of Velveteen's gym bag, grunting quietly at what the movement does to her arm. His eyes might still be on her in the act. That's not the point.

 

 

Glittery or not, Velveteen will ask questions some time. It's not just his grace and beauty that are stealing Aleister's sleep.

 

 

Ember starts painting his name.

 

 

_-the end_

 


End file.
